In a photolithography process which is one of semiconductor manufacturing processes, a resist is coated onto a surface of a semiconductor wafer (hereinafter referred to as “wafer”), the resist is exposed in a predetermined pattern, and then the resist is developed to form a resist pattern. A coating and developing apparatus for forming such a resist pattern is equipped with a process block including process modules for subjecting the wafer to various kinds of processes.
As described in JP2007-115831A, for example, the process block is structured by stacking unit blocks that form various kinds of coating films such as a resist film, and a unit block that performs a developing process, on one another. Each of the unit blocks is provided with a wafer transfer mechanism. A wafer is sequentially transferred by the transfer mechanism to a process module disposed in each unit block, and is subjected to a process.
In order to cope with miniaturization of a pattern to be formed in a wafer, a variety of process modules are provided to the coating and developing apparatus. For example, in addition to a resist-film forming module that forms a resist film on a wafer by supplying a resist onto the wafer, and a developing module that develops the resist by supplying a developing liquid onto the wafer, the coating and developing apparatus sometimes includes a module that forms an antireflection film below the resist film, a module that forms a protective film for immersion exposure on the wafer, and so on. It has been under review how to decrease an installation area of the coating and developing apparatus including these various kinds of modules.
In addition, in the coating and developing apparatus of JP2007-115831A, the wafer is sequentially transferred among the modules in respective layers. Thus, when one module cannot process the wafer, the wafer cannot be transferred to the succeeding module, which may lower a process efficiency. Thus, there has been desired a coating and developing apparatus having a small installation area, which is capable of preventing lowering of process efficiency.